The RECOM industrial centers were laid waste. It was clear the Rockoids planned on destroying the Alliance’s ability to build the machines of war.
The Alliance hastily returned their remaining craft to their command bases. The remaining commanders assembled in a private chamber far away from the center of the largest command base on Earth. Several were delayed, since they had to travel in hyperspace to reach their destination. Thompson knew there were at least fifty division colonels and commanders between the six task forces at the beginning of the counterattack; now that number had been cut nearly in half.
Thompson reviewed the latest casualty list. Unlike their civilian counterparts on the worlds below, early estimates of the number of dead were astonishing—thousands, perhaps even tens of thousands perished during the initial engagements.
A mood of doom and gloom infected the surviving Alliance soldiers and command personnel.
After Thompson broadcast the depressing figures via trans-space radio to Alliance commanders throughout the galaxy, more bad news arrived.
The fleet of cruisers the Ilsad Confederation, a small group of alien worlds friendly to the Alliance, had sent to assist in the battle against the Rockoids ran into an ambush while en route. Ten Rockoid super cruisers and five hundred smaller cruisers, reinforcements for the main Rockoid fleet near Earth, passed through the system at the same time.
The two sides discovered each other and battled it out. Many of the Ilsad cruisers were destroyed. Survivors managed to escape into hyperspace before being attacked; the remaining cruisers returned to their home worlds to avoid further losses. It was devastating news, compounded by the revelation that the Alliance suffered the destruction of nearly a fourth of the defense fleet for its capital star systems.
They would have to find some way to bring in reinforcements or else Earth, Taucon and Terea, and their 17 billion inhabitants, might have to surrender to the rampaging Rockoid fleet.
“We must act quickly, and recruit more assistance! I don’t care if we have to abandon the colonies. We have to gather all the ships we possibly can to defend the central worlds!” barked Thompson.
Ray glanced at her out of the corner of his eye. Once again he was reminded of the terrible role she seemed to portray in his dream. And again, he resisted the urge to speak out. He knew that he couldn’t make unsubstantiated charges without suffering the consequences.
A blond-haired officer stood up and said, “Sir, may I remind you Alliance edicts state very clearly we cannot evacuate a planet except in the face of a world-wide natural disaster or imminent destruction.”
“Yes, I know that! We have no alternative. If we lost Earth or any of our other capital worlds, the entire Alliance could come crashing down around us.”
The blond-haired man was an experienced commander. He bristled under Thompson’s verbal onslaught, which continued, almost without letup.
He held his tongue, and after a few moments, sat down.
Ray raised his hand.
Thompson acknowledged him. “Yes, Captain Perkins.” She gave him a perfunctory glance.
“Commander, I was taking medication to block those terrible dreams about the battle at Dorton, but now that they’ve begun to return, I feel they may help reveal something about the Rockoids. I’m convinced I’ve been tapping the mind of a Rockoid. I’m fairly sure it’s the female whose face I see in those dreams. I think she may be someone in authority. If I could somehow get in contact with her….”
Before he could finish, Thompson broke in. “There will be no contact with the Rockoids! Speaking to them at this point will be considered an act of treason. Anybody who associates with those barbarians is just as bad as they are.” Her fierce glare became almost irrational at this point. Ray could see her neck throbbing as she spoke.
As with her previous outbursts, she seemed to recover almost right away. Her voice became more controlled after a few seconds.
“Am I perfectly clear, Captain?”
“Crystal,” Ray said. Despite what Thompson said, Ray already knew there was no way to stop him from becoming an active participant in the events unfolding before them. He also suspected there was a lot more going on with Commander Thompson. Something about this situation affected her far more than one might expect of a battle-hardened veteran. Ray had known many commanders during his time in the Middle East, but he had never seen anyone caught up as emotionally as Thompson. She appeared to be cracking fast under the strain; he knew such a situation could become dangerous.
That night, the dreams took on a renewed intensity.
* * *
Halfway between Mars and Earth, her flagship anchored in the middle of deep space, an increasingly angry Empress Zanther became more and more concerned about the course of the invasion.
She sat in her throne room holding a portable viewscreen in her long, delicate hands. A recording of what her ships witnessed in the just-concluded battle appeared on the screen. Whenever the Alliance weapons bounced off her ships, she remained calm. A touch of a smile creased her beautiful countenance. When the viewscreen showed her fleet’s smaller spacecraft sustaining damage from the Alliance weapons, however, her mood changed, and she seethed.
Xorax had assured her the shields of even the smallest cruisers were impenetrable. He claimed their finest engineers had tested them.
Finally, she beamed a telepathic order to Xorax.
The minister arrived a few seconds later and walked rapidly up to Zanther’s throne. He bowed. “You called, Your Majesty?”
“Yes, I did, Minister. Here, look at this viewscreen and tell me what you see,” explained Zanther as she handed the device to him.
He had been observing the battle first hand. He knew what to expect even before he witnessed the playback in Zanther’s presence. As the Alliance’s fighters and cruisers plowed through the smaller vessels of the Rockoid fleet, he saw the damage. “I do not understand how this could be happening!”
She grabbed the viewscreen away from him, pointed a shapely finger at him, and shouted, “No, Minister, you knew. You knew very well our smaller ships could not withstand a sustained assault from the Alliance forces! Fortunately our largest cruisers have impenetrable shields and superior weapons; if they didn’t, the counterattack would not have just inflicted damage on our fleet—it could have been a massacre! You should have learned from the way the Alliance so easily wrought destruction on Dorton. They cannot be easily defeated. Before this battle, they put up a rather spirited fight against our forces at Terea, even though they knew they couldn’t win.”
Zanther’s anger intensified, “Tell me, Minister, who dared launch an attack on Terea against my direct orders?”
Xorax gave her what would have been interpreted as a dirty look. She barked back, “Minister, I would be careful on the way you show respect to your Empress!”
He bowed down to Zanther, hands behind his back, and said quietly, “I am truly sorry, your majesty. I admit we have a problem here. I shall have our finest engineers examine those shields and see if we can fix them in the field. Do not worry. We have inflicted serious damage to the Alliance fleet and will soon destroy it completely. Soon our flag will fly in the capital cities of the Alliance and their worlds will become Rockoid colonies. As for the one who disobeyed orders, I will make sure he is dealt with…in the appropriate fashion. One of his close relatives died in the battle over Dorton; he must have felt he could take matters into his own hands…he was quite wrong.”
Xorax did not have to spell out the measures he would take. She accepted his apology; though it was clear to her his sincerity was feigned. She also knew from the minister’s words that the disobedient commander would soon be at Xorax’s mercy. She didn’t expect to be hearing from that traitorous officer any time soon…or ever.
“Very well, Minister. Now go and do your job and report back as soon as you have more information.”
Zanther dismissed Xorax. After the Minister departed, she walked over to a large porthole
and looked out at the image of Earth in the distance. From space, the world seemed serene and untarnished by war. She wondered how things might have been had they been able to make peace with the inhabitants of that planet.
The more she thought about it, the more the doubts of the wisdom of their policy of conquering alien races swelled within her. Despite heavy support for her actions, she knew she would soon have to consider a policy change.
She also thought about the human male whose image filled her dreams. As the Alliance ships engaged her forces, she could sense his presence, pinpoint his location to within just a few meters, even in the vast distances of space. On a whim, she secretly sent commands to the Rockoid strategic computers so that the human’s craft wouldn’t register as an enemy ship.
She wondered what her counselor, Yexin, would think if he learned what she had done, but there was no time for her to speak with him. He was busy working with the rank and file soldiers, to instill in them the renewed faith they needed to ensure the mission’s success.
Maybe Zanther would soon discover who the human was, his secrets and mission, but there was a war to fight, and there was so little time.
* * *
As Xorax made his way through the vast hallways of the flagship, his thoughts turned to Zanther. His feelings about her were mixed. There was little doubt he desired her, not just because of her beautiful face and form; having her was a fast route to the power and wealth he craved.
Since the fall of the Zigant dynasty, the surviving members of that family had disappeared into the darkness. After a long period of anarchy and civil war in the Rockoid Empire, the Zigants rose again to briefly regain control of the empire from unstable warlords. With the violent assassination of Emperor Eronetus and his wife by alien dissidents, the Zigant dynasty lost its power base for good.
Xorax himself was a direct descendant of the great Eronetus.
He believed combining the Empress’s regal beauty and great popularity with his military expertise would fulfill the failed dreams of Eronetus — create a new generation of leaders that would assume greater heights of power and eventual domination of the entire galaxy.
So far, Zanther had rebuffed him with laughter and derision. Both he and Zanther knew traditions dictated that any Empress or Emperor having no mate at the time of taking power would have to choose one within seven kilo-timeframes, the equivalent of seven Earth years.
He thought he was the ideal consort for Zanther. Xorax believed it was his divine right to sit by her side on the Rockoid throne, as it had been his family’s right for generations. It was all the fault of the Rockoid Senate, which forced his family to enact a series of poorly implemented policies, resulting in economic rifts between the rich, middle-class, poor, and slaves. All this, plus events beyond their control, contributed to the near downfall of the Rockoid Empire.
Indeed, Xorax’s madness had become all-consuming. He had long-since forgotten that he was once a trusted friend of the royal family and not its adversary. He remained ignorant of the true cause of his slowly deteriorating sanity, his uncontrollable mood springs.
Chapter 16
While most of the troops at the military base slept in barracks like their counterparts in Earth’s past, Ray got his own room off base.
He mind filled with doubts as he went to bed that night. Ray reviewed the situation over and over again. There were too many questions about all that had happened to him in the past few weeks. Ray believed he had tapped into the mind of a Rockoid, possibly the one he saw in his dreams. Although the idea repelled him, he was also intrigued because it gave him insights into those strange, delicately beautiful, extraordinarily intelligent creatures.
These insights were all the more confusing the more he considered them. He felt strongly the Rockoids were not a war-like people. The thoughts he believed were relayed to him by that Rockoid woman showed that the depletion of natural resources throughout the empire forced them to attack uncooperative
worlds that refused to share the coveted resources. The tradition of conquering other races considered inferior to the Rockoids had been established eons ago by long-dead rulers with less-than-peaceful goals. Had it not been for the affair at Dorton, would the Rockoids have given the Alliance any attention at all, since the Alliance was so far from the Rockoid Empire?
Ray’s thoughts became more and more unfocused. He was exhausted from a long day of travel and war. The anti-dream pills were gone; he did take a sleeping pill, with Dr. Johnson’s assurance he would be deep in peaceful slumber soon. Ray drifted quietly, comfortably, into a state of near unconsciousness…
* * *
That night he dreamed again, as he feared. This time the visions were more frightening than ever, far more intense than the dreams he had previously experienced.
For some reason, the dream went beyond the point where it had always ended previously. There was Zanther and her expression of anguish. The image of the battle became dominant again. He didn’t understand why. Was Zanther sending him those visions?
In this new sequence, portions of the Alliance fleet continued to bombard Dorton, while at the same time the Alliance ships engaged the remaining Rockoid defense forces.
His mind suddenly focused on two ships, of a class that Ray did not recognize. The ships suddenly spun off in different directions, completely out of control, with fire bursting from all sides and engulfing their hulls.
Ray found himself in a state of fear and confusion, considering how vivid the dreams were now. Without warning, he observed yet another image he had never seen before. The battle scene changed to that of a gigantic steel-walled room with a decorative circular bed, a large black chair, and viewscreen, as well as other strange objects.
He could make out lush tapestries and huge, almost three-dimensional portraits of Rockoids placed around the room.
In the dream, he walked up to a mirror. He looked into it and he saw, not himself, but…the face of a Rockoid.
Zanther’s face…
Ray awoke in a cold sweat. He ran into the bathroom and looked into the mirror, out of paranoia. He sighed, calming down when he saw the face in the mirror was still his. He took notice of the bags under his eyes, the hollow, gaunt look he presented, due to days of little sleep and intense pressure.
Suddenly he heard a beeping noise from his wristview. He turned the device on. “Display message.”
Dr. Johnson’s face appeared. “Ray, I need you at the docking bay right away. I have some good news for y’all.”
The conversation ended abruptly. Ray wasn’t about to disobey his commanding officer, despite his exhaustion. He took a fast shower, and within minutes, he completed his preparations and ran out the door, but not before he downed a small cup of coffee in an effort to stay alert.
He walked rapidly, his mind filled with questions and contra-dictions. Again he thought of his strange experiences in space piloting that fighter. He played back the scene over and over again in his mind.
One thing was clear: The Rockoids deliberately decided not to fire on him. He knew that now, as certain as he knew his own name. It must be Zanther! She was responsible. He could almost see her standing before him, smiling a strange, angelic smile.
He stopped for a second, looking back and forth, expecting her to appear from behind a hallway, walking up to him.
Nobody was there.
When Ray arrived at the docking bay, he noticed something very different about it. Yesterday, it had been lightly filled, since many of the fighters had been destroyed in battle; now it was crammed with what seemed like hundreds of additional fighter craft.
“That’s not all!” Johnson yelled from behind him. “Look on the viewscreen!”
Ray glanced at a viewscreen to his right and saw a portion of the Alliance fleet hovering over Earth. It seemed as if there were hundreds of additional ships orbiting the planet, a few of them at least three times larger than some of the light cruisers Ray had seen going into battle the day before.
Why do those big cruisers look so familiar?
Johnson joined him now, and he seemed almost elated. “We have ten of these babies and we’ll have more of them in the coming weeks. They’re supposed to be the best ships in the galaxy. They have much better weapons and shields than our ordinary cruisers. We’re sure they’ll be able to take out a Rockoid super cruiser with the risk of taking only minor damage. Several hundred regular cruisers arrived this morning along with these ten battleships. A lot of them are from Alliance exploration fleets from across the galaxy. Many are commanded by veteran captains. Believe it or not, the rest of the ships are part of the reinforcements we thought had retreated to their home world.”
“I don’t understand.”
“We are finally one up on those goddamned Rockoids!” Johnson beamed from ear to ear.
“We originally believed an armada of reinforcements sent by one of our allies, the Ilsad Confederation, was intercepted by an armada of Rockoid warships. The two forces supposedly fought it out until most of the Ilsad ships were destroyed. At that point, they sent us a trans-space radio signal saying they were returning to their home planet; they had suffered extensive damage and many casualties. They didn’t encrypt the message, figuring the Rockoids would easily intercept them. The Rockoid reinforcements turned around and followed the fleet supposedly going back to their home world.”
“What do you mean, ‘supposedly?’ Weren’t they retreating for real?”
“That’s what we thought at first, but when we received an encrypted copy of their command logs, we saw their real intent. It turned out their destination was not back to the Ilsad home world, but here. King Borin, the Ilsad Confederation’s monarch, has confirmed our hopes. He told us only a small number of his warships had actually been destroyed in the skirmish with the enemy.”
Johnson was in his element now, rejoicing over an event that might turn the tide of this dreadful war in the Alliance’s favor.
“In hyperspace, a ship’s precise location can’t be measured. The Rockoids went off on a wild-goose chase. They’ll find out they’ve been fooled soon enough; right now we have the advantage. We’re bolstering the Ilsad crews with survivors from yesterday’s battle as I speak. With any luck, we’ll blow those goddamned Rockoids to space dust before dinner!”
Attack of the Rockoids Page 19